


The Wolf at Heaven's Door

by knifeear



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:13:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3575697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knifeear/pseuds/knifeear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seasons slip by as grains of sand until at last their paths cross once more. She comes upon him one day in the space through the seeing glass, the world between worlds where colors burst to life at the touch of an elf.</p><p>[spiritual sequel to The Beast in the Gloaming]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolf at Heaven's Door

Seasons slip by as grains of sand until at last their paths cross once more. She comes upon him one day in the space through the seeing glass, the world between worlds where colors burst to life at the touch of an elf.

He observes that time has not been kind. When first they met she had weathered twenty-eight winters. Now her years are more than twoscore and ten - he has been counting all the while. Her hair is shot through with iron-gray on its way to white. Duty has etched deep lines into the hard planes of her face and another break has caused her nose to jut anew. He used to know the map of scars across her skin. Countless foreign battles are now recorded there.

But though her limbal rings have faded, her eyes are still like steel, and her back is yet unbent - a small mercy, he thinks, given that he remains unchanged. Vallaslin still mars her expression, brazen and defiant and _there_. He is put in the mind of an old battleaxe, or an aging Mabari. But for all that and more, the sight of her warms ancient blood that has long run cold. That same proud jaw, that same blazing fury ( _counting birds against the sun_ )… still too real to bear.

He greets her ( _vhenan_ ), for what else can he do? Her harsh bark of laughter - bitter, weary - banishes the old endearment from where it hung in the air between them. Time has not dulled the blade of her temper, then.

She knows of his secrets, she tells him, and of his plans. He does not ask how she came into this knowledge. Visions born from spectres of memories, or murmurs from the Well perhaps, what does it matter? The lot of elves is better now, she says - of this he is aware. Her dreams reflect her waking hours, and from the Fade he has selfishly peered into them.

From the ashes of the Inquisition she forged an elven nation, another homeland gouged out from the face of Thedas with sweat and tears. The campaign was long and bloody, but succeed they did, and for the first time in Ages, in the People hope for the future sprang anew. Her mastery of the mark has grown such that with it she can swallow armies - there are none who dare oppose them, and they have no need for gods. _Enasalin._

She beseeches him to alter his course, that she might stay her hand. He cannot. He is bound to his cause as she is to hers. His very existence threatens their hard-won peace - the wolf at heaven’s door. She bares her blade. _Fen’Harel’s Tooth_ , he recalls (that greatest of ironies), even as his staff thrums to life. This is preordained, written in stars by some cruel power. It always has been. _Alas. So long as the music plays, we dance._

He once told her to harden her heart. A foolish thing to say, he realizes now. She has always been hard.

Wolf and wolfhound clash in their final reckoning.

Even burdened by the weight of years she bests him. His last words are not for her but for the goal he will never realize, for the People he has failed. _Ir abelas._

In the end, his greatest fear never comes to pass, for she kneels at his side until at long last the life drains out of him.

**Author's Note:**

> A spiritual sequel to "The Beast in the Gloaming" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/3575589).
> 
> Posted to Tumblr if you would prefer to read it there - http://jaalamadarav.tumblr.com/post/113909410528/the-wolf-at-heavens-door


End file.
